Lady Ostapeck's Whimsy Hill Studio
Iris, in Greek mythology, is the messenger of the gods and personified by the rainbow. According to Hesiod, a contemporary of Homer, she was assigned the task of carrying water from the River Styx, the boundary between earth and the underworld, to the gods whenever serious oaths were undertaken. If a god lied, he could experience a year of unconsciousness. That Lady chose Iris, a bruised figurine in her studio, was not random. The Whimsy Studio photographs might represent Iris-inspired messages sliding down the rainbow and emerging in Lady's portraiture. The studio's brochure appears below.
Lady Ostapeck's photographs included outdoor scenes as well as studio portraits. The outdoor scene on the left is from the early 1990s and the next one from the 1970s. Both scenes were from Lady's annual Midsummer parties.
The Whimsy Hill Studio photographs required a rather long interview with the client. Because of this, Lady scheduled only one sitting a day. The purpose of this conversation was to determine which region of the world the client felt particularly attracted to. Once the locale was known, the conversation turned to the period but she relied heavily on the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century.
Lady maintained a collection of props as well as vintage clothing to create images that reflected Fine Art Photography in Pictorialism, an artistic movement around the turn of the century between 1885 and 1915. In addition to Iris, inspiration came from the Victorian portraitist, Julia Margaret Cameron, who was active in the mid-19th century.
